The Allure of Counterpoint: History and Reconciliation in the Writing of Edward Said and Assia Djebar

Abstract

This article examines the work of Algerian writer Assia Djebar in light of Edward Said’s theory of counterpoint. For Said, the “basic humanistic mission today, whether in music, literature, or any of the arts or the humanities, has to do with the preservation of difference without, at the same time, sinking in to the desire to dominate.” In Culture and Imperialism (1993), Said proposed counterpoint as a model of how discrepant texts and historical narratives could be brought together on equal terms, and reconceived as part of a complex whole. In her fiction, Djebar deploys literary strategies that closely approximate musical counterpoint: the simultaneous development of multiple narratives, the juxtaposition of dissonant subject positions, and the use of such figures as chiasmus, epigraph, allusion, and palimpsest. Through such contrapuntal techniques, Djebar has developed a compassionate, nuanced and inclusive approach to history—one that accommodates difference, even when it comes to the most entrenched conflicts of the twentieth century.

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